Home › The Principles of Cookery › Syllabubs, Whipped
Syllabubs, Whipped
Rub a lump of loaf sugar on the outside of a lemon, put to it half a pint of thick cream, and sweeten to taste. Squeeze in the juice of a lemon, and add a glassful of Madeira wine or French brandy. Mill it to a froth with a chocolate mill, take off the froth as it rises, and lay it in a hair sieve. Fill one half of the glass with red wine, then lay the froth on it as high as possible; but take care that it is well drained in the sieve, otherwise it will mix with the wine, and the syllabub be spoiled.
A whipped syllabub is a two-part drink: a sweet wine base in the bottom of the glass and a stiff, well-drained lemon-and-wine froth piled on top. Almost everything that can go wrong comes down to drainage and cream fat.
- The hinge: drain the frothThe froth must sit in the sieve until it stops dripping, or the liquid weeping out of it will slump into the wine and grey the whole glass. An hour in the refrigerator is a minimum; several hours or overnight is better, with the sieve set over a bowl.
- Half a pint of thick creamAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. "Thick cream" means double cream at roughly 48% fat; US heavy cream at 36% works but gives a softer, wetter froth that needs longer draining.
- Loaf sugar on the lemonLoaf sugar was a hard cone of refined sugar, broken into lumps. Rubbing a lump over the lemon skin strips the oil-bearing zest; a few strokes of a whole sugar cube over the fruit, or a teaspoon of finely grated zest muddled into the sugar, does the same thing.
- Chocolate millA wooden molinillo, twirled between the palms. A balloon whisk is the direct substitute. Do not use an electric mixer at speed: the point is to raise a light froth and skim it off as it forms, not to whip the whole bowl to stiff peaks.
- Hair sieveA sieve of woven horsehair, roughly the fineness of modern nylon mesh. Any fine sieve lined with damp muslin or a coffee filter will serve.
- A glassful of wineAn unhelpfully vague measure; in syllabub recipes of this period it generally means a wineglass of about 2 fl oz. Start there, since more alcohol makes the cream slower to froth and quicker to weep.
- The red wine belowA dry red will taste thin against the sweet froth. Other syllabub recipes of the period call for port, sweet sherry or a sweetened claret, and any of those balances better here.
- Yield and servingHalf a pint of cream fills four to six small glasses. Keep cold; a thoroughly drained froth holds its shape for some hours, but an under-drained one will begin to weep into the wine much sooner.
Syllabub belongs to a family of English cream-and-wine dishes that ran from the sixteenth century well into the nineteenth, and it came in distinct grades. The oldest form was drunk rather than eaten, the cream curdling in the wine to leave a boozy whey beneath a soft curd, and it is often said to have been made by milking a cow straight into the cider or wine. The "whipped" or "everlasting" syllabub in this entry is the refined descendant, in which the froth is raised separately, drained until it will hold its shape, and floated on the wine so the two layers stay distinct in the glass. By the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary in the late Victorian period the dish was already old-fashioned, and the chocolate mill it calls for was an archaism even then.